Chapter 20 — Cages Decorated with Chandeliers

Because that is the thing I finally understood, in the bright quiet of that townhouse, with my daughter asleep down the hall behind a door no one could lock against her.

Some families are not really families.

They wear the shape of one — the shared table, the holidays, the word itself, spoken often and warmly for the benefit of guests.

But underneath the shape, there is no actual family in them, none of the thing the word is supposed to mean: no safety, no belonging, no love that holds when it is inconvenient to hold.